


A Monster In Their Midst

by bluebeholder



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Loneliness, heavy is the head that wears the crown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23530438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: Awakening with the Anchor on her hand, Kubide Adaar muses on her position in a new reality.A meditation on monstrousness, otherness, and the jagged edges of Thedas revealed by the Vashoth Inquisitor origin.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	A Monster In Their Midst

**Author's Note:**

> Introducing my Inquisitor, Kubide Adaar, warrior Vashoth. 
> 
> For your visualization pleasure...allow me to note one thing. Forget the canon horn options: lady's got Alpine ibex horns. If the Iron Bull can have fckin Texas longhorn horns and the Arishok can have multiple SETS of horns, Kubide can have something unique. (If you noticed a slight alteration, it's because she underwent a hair color change and needed an update. And then I realized I messed up her height and had to fix that too.)

They call her the Herald of Andraste.

In the telling, it seems the story has become a little warped. Kubide doesn’t know what to do but accept it and move on. She is no Andrastian. It would be _just_ her luck that Andraste truly guided her out of the Fade and gave her the power to fight the Breach.

For her survival, for the mark on her hand, for the stories—they honor her. People bow when she passes, even kneel, if they are particularly devout. The stares are worshipful, a little fearful. Some of the Chantry officials are still suspicious, but even they make obeisance at her approach, murmuring praise to the Herald.

It’s almost _comical_. A week ago, Kubide had been nothing more than a mercenary, respected only as far as her sword could reach and perpetually on the verge of becoming a scapegoat once again. A week ago, she’d been under suspicion of destroying the Conclave and murdering the Divine, locked in chains and threatened with execution. A week ago, no one would believe a word she said and so she had remained silent.

And today…all that is different.

Kubide walks through Haven a little aimlessly, buying herself time to think before going up to the chantry and meeting with Cassandra. It’s a pleasant community, rustic and small. Houses are well-kept, and though snow drifts over everything, melting in the mountain sunlight, there’s evidence of well-kept gardens. People have proverbs from the Chant of Light inscribed over their doors, and wear Chantry amulets openly and proudly.

It would be nice, to be here in peaceful times, even if people would have looked at Kubide with hostility. At the moment, though, Kubide is reasonably sure she’d prefer hostility to the open _awe_ on every person’s face.

Though Kubide tries to meet the stares with the appropriate somber grace, mimicked off the blank stares of stone saints she’s seen in Chantries, she can’t help a private smile. Would they look at her this way if she were an elf, a human, a dwarf? Perhaps, but then again, Kubide’s stature certainly isn’t doing much to diminish the attention they give her.

Even among her fellow Vashothari, Kubide is tall. She stands nearly seven and a half feet tall—several inches taller than the average Vashothari—and if the height of her horns is taken into account, they add another half a foot. Her build, by birth and training, is as powerful as most of the men of the Valo-Kas. Once, a very sincere old woman in Ferelden called her “statuesque.” Less poetically, a very drunk Basari once told Kubide she was “built like a brick shithouse.”

Doors in Haven are not built for her. She has to bend to get through them and her shoulders sometimes brush the doorframes. The bed she sleeps on is too small and there is no bolster to support her head and make room for her horns, which means she sleeps curled on her side. Chairs are too low and her choice is to sit uncomfortably at angles or with legs spread, or bring her knees to her chest. Sitting on them brings terror that they’ll collapse under her weight. Desks and tables are at constant risk of upset when Kubide sits at them. Eating utensils are too small. Cups are _swallowed_ by her hand.

She doesn’t want to consider the risk of wineglasses.

Even the clothes they’ve provided for her don’t entirely fit, having needed major tailoring not to split at the seams when she so much as moves an arm. And she _does_ need to move her arm, since she is still a warrior and those skills will be _thoroughly_ required of the Herald of Andraste. The day she was up and moving again, Kubide put her shoulder to the grindstone and got back to work on morning exercises. It draws attention, just as everything she does, but at least when she’s pushing her body to its limits the only thing she can think about is how much her thighs hurt.

As she wanders past the trebuchets along the edge of Haven, Kubide reflects that it’s lucky that the Valo-Kas left their supplies and gear in the semi-permanent camp they’d set up outside Haven. None of it was lost in the explosion that destroyed the Conclave. Kubide got her personal belongings back, including a mess kit sized for her hands, found a folding camp stool built to support someone of her size, and located some other sundries that make living in Haven slightly more comfortable for her.

Even with those small comforts, she can’t escape the fact that, green-glowing mark or not, she is the most singularly noticeable person in every room she enters.

It’s good to be away from the people of Haven. No one is out on the edge of town—it’s cold and people are nervous about what might be out in the forests. Admittedly, wandering off alone is genuinely unwise, but Kubide would rather fight a demon right now than have one more strange encounter with a panicking servant or fanatical Chantry sister. Haven makes her skin crawl.

Everyone _stares_ at her.

Which isn’t a new thing it itself, but the stares have taken on a novel and disturbing edge. The mark changed the tenor of the stares from “curious verging on hostile” to “worshipful verging on terrified.” No matter the motivation behind the attention, Kubide still finds it _abundantly_ clear that she is separated from the masses, a monster in their midst.

“I’d heard that Qunari were tall, but you’re _much_ taller than I expected.” “Do your horns fall off, like a deer’s?” “There are no Qunari in the Chantry. Why did Andraste choose _you_ , Herald?”

The comments and questions to her face are endless, but worse are the things she overhears people saying when they think she can’t hear. “Her eyes are like a demon’s.” “Even if she is the Herald, she is still nothing more than an ox.” “How can someone like her lead us?”

And there was a time when Kubide would have had a sharp response to every question, turned cold anger on the people who insulted her, corrected people on their many misconceptions, but this is not that time anymore. Without the Valo-Kas at her back, she has no true friends. The elf Solas and the dwarf Varric might be friends in time, and Leliana is on her side, but they are _not_ Vashothari.

At the palisade, Kubide stops and leans on it. The only sound is the snow-cold wind sighing in the pines and ruffling the loose tendrils of long white hair curling around her face. Behind her is the Breach, but Kubide forcibly does not think about that. The wall, high enough that a human can’t see over it, is just low enough for Kubide to lay her folded arms on. She rests her chin on her arms and stares off over the peaks.

A heartache is taking shape which she does not want to think about. She is the _only_ survivor of the explosion. The Valo-Kas inside the building, all but her, died. Her friends, the people she led, _gone_. They’re not the first friends she’s lost, of course; mercenary life is not kind or safe.

Losing them in honest battle is different than losing them to this act of devastation.

Now Kubide is the only one of her kind in Haven. She speaks Trade as well as anyone here, perhaps better. It was, after all, her first language, and she has spent much of her thirty-six years as a negotiator and diplomat for the Valo-Kas—one of the reasons she was called upon to lead this company to guard the Conclave. Despite her reputation as a berserker, Kubide _much_ prefers to wage war with words than a sword, and she is good at it.

She can call herself without an ounce of ego as well-educated and well-spoken as any scholar in the Free Marches, though it’s the product of autodidactic learning. Kubide knows how to play on a noble’s greed, knows how to strike a bargain with the shrewdest merchant, and can speak with passable fluency in Orlesian and Antivan. She negotiated services with the Prince of Starkhaven once, the most stressful task in her considerable experience, and it was agreed by everyone that Kubide ended with the better end of the bargain.

Yet, in Haven, it still feels as if she speaks a different language altogether, one no one else understands. Her words, no matter how eloquent, never seem to hit the mark. She feels off-balance, clumsy, unsure, as if she stands on shifting ground.

Monster or not, she is the Herald of Andraste, and the people of Haven honor her.

If she had the chance, Kubide would discard all the honor to be again among people who understand her, who know her, who love her. A monster among monsters is no monster at all. She could be herself again.

But Kubide is not naïve. With this mark on her hand, this title on her head, she will _never_ be able to go back to the simple Vashoth mercenary she once was. She will have to adapt.

She _will_ survive.

After a long while, when her nose and ears have grown too cold to bear, Kubide turns back to Haven. She looks up at the Breach, a ragged scar in the heavens that apparently only she can heal. It could be her destruction, of course; the sensation of the mark on her hand feels like she holds death in her palm. Yet the Breach could also be her salvation. She is _necessary_ to the success of this task, and closing the Breach will go a long way toward clearing her name.

Kubide rubs her hands together to warm them. She thinks wryly that if Andraste truly chose her, she may have chosen the right person. Kubide is not the hero people want her to be and, perhaps, she never will be. But from what little Kubide knows of the Chant of Light, Andraste was also a foreigner in strange lands. She was marked as different from the beginning, treated as strange for her visions and trances. Despite it all, Andraste rose to become the champion against the ancient Tevinter Imperium. While Kubide has mixed feelings about the Chantry—to say the least!—she appreciates the story of Andraste herself.

The parallels between them, to Kubide, are undeniably eerie.

“I only hope,” Kubide murmurs, walking with slow steps back into Haven again, “that I do not also end my days on a pyre.”

**Author's Note:**

> Learned that “Vashothari” is a fanon word and decided to roll with that. Just felt that it should be noted, for the sake of due diligence.
> 
> This is a hyper-personal piece that started as a vent and evolved into a proper character study. I've done my best to edit it into something narratively readable, but I don't know how well that actually *worked.* We'll see.


End file.
